


Dance Apocolyptic

by kit_fox



Category: Metropolis: The Chase Suite - Janelle Monae, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Revolution, Singing, afro futurism, android love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 15:46:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8019796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kit_fox/pseuds/kit_fox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one means to start the android revolution.  Cindi Mayweather was just trying to follow her heart and the whole world heard it break. Now a few more fists are raised in the air than on her planet alone.</p><p>No one means to fall in love.  Especially when feelings are an idiot's luxury.  Hux was just trying to do his job, and a singer in a filthy club was the last thing he expected to call his whole life into question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. She's So Freaked Out

**Author's Note:**

> Cindi Mayweather is the character and creation of the talented Janelle Monae, and her story and songs are laid out in the four part album series beginning with Metropolis: The Chase Suite. Any songs in this story or chapter titles are her lyrics alone, not mine. 
> 
> I wanted Cindi Mayweather as a character because the world created for her fit so well with the Star Wars universe, that dirty sci-fi fantasy Blade Runner/Fifth Element style I love, and I wanted to see Hux with someone like her. I also wanted to write a good female character without compromising Rey, who I don't mind seeing in fic but wouldn't attempt to write my own self.
> 
> Please enjoy and do leave feedback so I know how it went down!

Negotiations on Nadra Prime were quick and clean, as they always were when General Hux brought the knight with him. It was a small price to pay for the security of having the agreement closed quickly, another alliance secured for the glory of the First Order, and no violence necessary. Often just the sight of Ren, hulking behind him as he laid out the terms, glowering like a silent watch dog, was enough for the twitchiest of officials to finally put their fingerprint down. This time they were finished with time to spare, a fact which made Hux uncomfortably twitchy. He preferred everything to be done exactly as scheduled. Air in the itinerary left room for unexpected surprises.

There was nothing so unexpected as Ren taking his arm and leading him away from his compliment of guards and out of the sleek mulberry building.

"Get a drink with me, General," said his bizarre and often upsetting companion as he shoved him outside into the evening with a sloppy salute at Hux's men. "I've heard much about the bad side of town."

"You what!" Hux said. He finally regained enough composure to shrug away from Kylo's hands. "Absolutely not, I've no time for your nonsense, Ren!"

"You have plenty of time for a drink," Ren continued to hustle him into the pod they'd flown down with and Hux resigned himself with a sigh as the door closed, letting Kylo pilot them past fashionable ships and their fashionable drivers, streetlights illuminating the warm pavement.

"Oh, and in the seedy district?" Hux rolled his eyes, his curiosity propelling him forward though he would hate to admit it. "Sounds charming, Ren. Looking to uncover the true origin of your birth, or do you actually have a friend somewhere in this galaxy?"

"I heard about a good singer. Nervous without your guard, General? You're an armed man. Probably somewhat trained. I'm sure you can handle a little culture outside the blue blooded stiffs you're accustomed to."

Hux could hear the smile under the mask and it infuriated him. He wanted to respond with a dozen biting quips but each one died on his tongue the moment he thought of it. There was no reason to trust Ren, nor any reason to dirty his dress uniform on some heathen street corner listening to whatever this overgrown teenager considered music. But he did so hate when Ren tried to shock him and actually succeeded, and he was determined to not allow this to be one of those moments. He was indeed armed, and if anything happened to embarrass himself or the First Order, he would blow the knight's fool head off.

It wasn't long before expensive vehicles gave way to rusted, broken down old pods with half their parts stolen. The buildings, no longer tall and thin and iridescent like beetle wings, were short, sad affairs, with flashing signs outside and murals and names and nonsense words spray painted on the open brick. Everywhere, pleasure bots lurked in doorways, calling out to Kylo and Hux and whirring faintly as they undulated. Kylo parked their pod under a flickering street lamp.

"Charming part of the city you've discovered, Ren," Hux said as they picked their way over a body on the street -- stone dead or stone drunk, Hux was not curious. "How much further to this no doubt delightful opera of the ghetto?"

It was, if one was being logical, not possible to read any emotion beneath that damned ridiculous mask -- which Hux supposed must be why Ren wore it, a safeguard against all possible invasion -- but he fancied sometimes he could imagine when that cheeky bastard was smiling. They turned the next corner and approached a building with people of every imaginable shape and style milling about and heading inside, the doors blasting a symphony of low, thumping, beats each time they were opened.

This was not his scene; young punks with gold facial tattoos or feathers laced into their spines, loud music and a dark bar with few exits and a good chance for violence. He didn't mind the sound of the music, to his surprise -- fast and dark and thrilling it was, like nothing he would ever choose for himself -- but it wasn't until Kylo dragged him in, past the confused door man, and he actually got a look at the stage, that his attitude changed.

She was dancing as she sang, but not dancing as he had ever seen it. The woman would not keep _still,_ twisting and tapping and spinning around the stage like a trapped junebug, using her whole body as a piece of art. He couldn't look away. Her moves were so hypnotic that he only just registered her beauty; dark skin and wide, bright eyes that sparkled with mischief and vivacity, hair piled high and her slim frame tucked into a trim little tuxedo vest and bow tie. Her voice was gorgeous, irreverent, spicy and sweet.

_But I really really wanna thank you, for dancing to the end, you found a way to break out, you're not afraid to break out, but I need to know, if the world says it's time to go, tell me will you freak out?_

Kylo nudged a beer into Hux's hand and he was too entranced to wonder where it came from or if it was sanitary. He felt himself almost wanting to smile as he watched her. She seemed to do it so easily.

"Not bad is she?" Kylo said in his ear. "Except for the riot she intends to start, I'd say she's lovely."

"Lovely -- what, riot?" Hux broke out of his fog and managed to quiet his voice at the last word just in time. "What are you talking about, Ren?"

Kylo nodded to the crowd, all dancing and clapping in time.

"If they're not androids, they're android sympathizers. And if she's who I think she is, everyone here will look up to her."

Hux looked more carefully at the crowd. He hadn't noticed the droids among them, but of course, that was the point. Who cared what droids did and where they went? They seemed to be everywhere, even these humanoid ones that were becoming more popular now. On this particular planet, droids were created for fashion and often tended toward the bizarre end of the haute couture. Hux had not cared to learn much about the government's minor scuffles with a rising population of android sympathizers -- their planetwide ban on droid liberty was not unheard of and had no bearing on their relationship with the First Order.

Until the very real possibility that there might be riot in a shady nightclub where the two top officers of the Order happened to be. Hux drained his beer and slipped his hand inside his jacket to flip open the top of his holster.

"And who do you think she is?" He hissed. "Why should they look up to a singer?"

"They should if she's the android who escaped from Metropolis."

Hux snapped his eyes back up to the beauty with the microphone. A little golden circle just above her ear glinted under the stage lights. He'd completely missed it. She was so perfect, so seamless, so human. He had never seen an android with so much... life.

The music was cut and the lights went down leaving dim red floor lamps to flicker on. People started yelling toward the front of the club and the words made it to Hux's ears as he tugged off his glove and closed his fingers around his blaster.

"Raid! Raid!"

Hux looked to the singer, her large lovely eyes full of fear in the red light. She began running toward the back of the stage and he jerked toward her before Kylo grabbed his arm. Through the crowd came two security droids, voices calling out over the panic and the scuffle.

"Cindi Mayweather, you're under arrest for violation of android protocol according to rule seven section three of the law dealing with delinquent droids."


	2. Some Calling Me A Sinner, Some Calling Me A Winner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux has trouble moving on and Kylo has a solution. Like all of Kylo's solutions, this is probably a terrible idea.

"Get it together. You've been moping for days."

Hux scrambled to look busy at his desk, searching for something to straighten or file or put away, which naturally was impossible with a desk as pristine and orderly as his own. It was a perfect work space, devoid of distraction, everything tucked into exactly the corner where it fit with no potential for abnormality. He huffed as Kylo spoke behind him.

"If moping looks like running this ship and a compound of highly trained soldiers while other officers have time to play games, yes Ren, I suppose you might say so," he said, tension already coiling in his neck and shoulders. "I don't see how it's any business of yours."

The dark knight leaned in Hux's office doorway, his helmet under one arm so Hux could see the look he was throwing his way -- that smirking, overconfident, penetrating stare that made him wonder if that swaggering brat really was the mystic he claimed to be, able to see emotions like heat waves.

"No one's attacking your work ethic, General, you've been running things beautifully," he said, leaving Hux to frown and raise an eyebrow at the unexpected compliment. "But you get that look -- there, that one -- and you've had it ever since that girl."

"Oh."

Hux smoothed out his face and turned primly around, palming open the flex screen at his desktop and pretending to type something. That girl. That android. It was difficult to process what he had felt that night. He'd watched her being grabbed and stunned by two spooks and as she was being taken out through the surging, fighting crowd he just stood there, looking on with a mask of indifference. There was no reason to care what happened to an android, no matter how lovely she was, no matter how carefree and innocent and perfect she looked when she danced. She was property that had escaped, and he had no business with her. Hux was not a man who spent much time on runaway emotions, harboring them or analyzing them, and what he felt or did not feel with regard to that girl was safely stowed away in what passed for his heart, never again to be trifled with.

"Don't act like that, I know you a little better by now," said Kylo. "You liked her. You didn't like seeing her taken away like that. It doesn't weaken you to admit that."

Hux sighed and snapped his work screen shut, glaring at Kylo.

"It was a fine singer, for its type," he said. "And I will allow that it had exceptional form and grace for an android, its movements were fluid and its skin was --"

"Flawless," Kylo smiled and Hux felt his ears burn. "The next word you wanted to say was flawless. And you're right, she was, so why are you acting like she didn't impress you?"

"Because it was a thing and things belong to those who own them and as you can see I am not a man with much patience for knick knacks of any sort so Ren if this inane bit of conversation is really all you wanted, would you mind awfully going the hell away?"

Kylo paused and watched him a moment, then looked down at his mask, absently trying to rub out a small scuff on the distressed landscape of one side.

"So," he said. "I suppose you wouldn't like to see her again."

\---------------------------

Metropolis was, above all, glamorous. A rich city with rich inhabitants, more concerned wth fashion than function, it had trounced any attempt at uprising from its less fortunate citizens from times ancient to recent by simply starving them the old fashioned way of the capitalists. If costs were too high, people were too tired and hungry to kick up dust. If that didn't work, the government was happy to release into the streets one of their many cheap, destructive, highly addictive narcotics, to carve out a section of the populace they felt society was better off without in the first place.

These were tactics the First Order was familiar with, even if they didn't employ them. Violence and brutality were necessary companions to Hux and his superiors, but such a hideous display of classism and cruelty was, to the General, distasteful. At least he had found it so when he first set up the alliance with Nadra Prime and its capitol city. After seeing just a little more of the city itself, of this colorful underbelly the controlling rich seemed so desperate to pull further down, after hearing its music and seeing its people and being among them, even for just an hour, distasteful seemed a masterful piece of understatement. As Hux piloted the pod bearing himself and Kylo back to Metropolis, he couldn't help looking at the glittering city with its iridescent skyscrapers and trendy shuttles, its fashionable lotus blossom street lamps and its swanlike women in furs of every imaginable creature, and thinking _repulsive, horrifying, putrescent, bloated, the worst brand of garbage --_

"General?" Kylo glanced at him from the side seat, raising an eyebrow. His helmet was in his lap, a final pin in the sleeve of his best attire which was, Hux noted, not terribly different from his normal attire. Perhaps less frayed and with fewer blood stains. "You look... tense."

"I do not look tense."

"Then you need to get to restroom quickly."

Hux wanted to laugh, and he almost did. He made the final adjustments to land and sighed. He was tense. He had been tense ever since Kylo told him about that girl. Seeing her again was one thing, if it just happened, unplanned, a chance meeting in another club perhaps where he could see her face and hear her sing and then slip away and back to work and shut her out of his mind again forever, rationalizing his behavior as the momentary need to relieve some stress, dismissing her as a fond memory, and goodnight. This time he had nowhere to hide from his motivations. He was taking time away to return to a planet the Order no longer needed to communicate with. He was away, with Ren, on a frivolous escapade he tried very hard to justify as a courtesy meeting with planetary leaders, a cultural exchange, but inside it was curiosity that drove him, and something else, something he knew very well. Fury.

Cindi Mayweather was the jewel in the crown of the Metropolis Android Auction. She had been brought in, cleaned up, and would be sold to the rich idiot who wanted her most. For what, Hux dared not think, but the image of her as a pet bird, singing in a cage, would not be scrubbed from his mind.

There was no reason for Hux to go. Except, as Kylo observed, to see her one more time. And then that would be all.


	3. Electric Ladies, Will You Sleep Or Will You Preach?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux and Kylo attend an unusual auction.

"I've never been to an auction in my life, let alone an android one," Hux muttered as they were shown to their seats and given little black batons for placing bids.

"Nor I," said Kylo, looking around them at the crowd. 

They had been welcomed as important guests of the Metropolis government and seated in one of the balconies overlooking the runway, but all around them were unusual faces. The First Order and Metropolis society were similar in their xenophobia, with not a single extraterrestrial among the guests, but the guests themselves were as bizarre as any alien Hux had ever seen, with planetary fashion ranging from ultraviolet makeup to extreme body enhancements like lips that absorbed half of a person's face or fingers three sizes too long, skin dyed in every imaginable color and hair to match. The effect was ghastly, a nightmare carnival for the unconscionable rich.

"Why are you here?" Hux muttered to Kylo as the lights went down.

The knight made an irritated noise beneath his mask and pretended not to hear. Hux could feel him scanning the crowd just as he was -- Hux was looking for danger, for armed persons or insurgents or anyone with a conflict, of which there were many -- Kylo seemed simply to be peoplewatching, though he had seemed more interested in the small group of protesters outside the arena, many of whom Hux recognized from the nightclub. 

"Answer me," said Hux, leaning in closer as the mistress of ceremonies swaggered out on the stage to scattered applause. "You knew she would be at the club that night."

The atmosphere inside was already tense. Hux could see a muscle bound constable surrounded by guards in masks nodding across the room to a ghoulish man in a top hat. The gesture might have been polite if the constable's guards had not all been fingering their guns or if the ghoul's smile did not look so hungry. Violence was threatening to erupt from every corner of this elegant hall and Hux was regretting coming, let alone with only two blasters on his person.

"It was a possibility," Kylo grunted and the man in front of them with the gigantic nose and feathered hat turned around with a sour look. 

"And you knew she was in trouble -- or she was going to _start_ trouble," he hissed, trying to keep his voice down as the crowd laughed at something the woman onstage said.

"How would I know that?"

"Because you know things!"

"Do I, General? You never seemed to want to admit as much before."

"Ren, I'm losing my patience."

"You have to _have_ a thing before you can --"

 _"Gentleman!"_ Feathered Hat huffed at them and they both shrank a little, feeling like they were back in school.

They sat in terse silence a moment as the lady onstage delivered a pretentious monologue about beauty in modern society and the ability to capture that beauty and bottle it, does that make us scientists or gods? Why not both?

"You have always tended toward the rebellious, Ren," Hux whispered, straining to keep his voice low. "If I thought for one moment you were trying to drag the Order into some damn fool custody battle --"

"And now, the prize of the city, the droid for whom you've all been waiting," came the voice from the stage, and the crowd's anticipation made Hux sit up and pay attention more than the words themselves. "Cindi Mayweather!"

Curtains parted and there she was at a microphone, radiant as before and dancing the very moment the band in the pit below began to play. Hux was leaning forward, clutching the baton in his hand hard enough to hear the creaking of his leather glove above the music and the roar of the crowd below. Elegant as they were, many of them were leaping from their seats, practically rioting at the sight of her. Before her first note was sung, Hux could see batons flashing at the screens behind her, bids registering in bright blue.

_We're dancing free but we're stuck here underground, and everybody trying to figure they way out, hey hey hey, all we ever wanted to say, was chased erased and then thrown away, and day to day we live in a daze..._

Hux watched her carefully. Her face was flawless, smiling, carefree and innocent just as she was at the club, her dancing as wild and unreserved as before, she seemed to be under no visible duress. It was her lyrics that caught him. She seemed to be speaking directly to the crowd. And her eyes, they flashed each time a bid was registered, ever so briefly fixing on the bidder.

_You're free but in your mind, your freedom's in a bind..._

This was torture. He shouldn't have come here. This poor girl -- _this android,_ he reminded himself -- was going to be sold to one of these ghouls and it was none of his business.

She smiled as she danced. A lady in a gigantic fur with the head and feet still attached whispered something to a man with a tiny mustache beside her, who gave her a smirk and raised his bid. Hux gripped his baton harder and heard a crack.

"Why, Ren?" he hissed. "Why did you bring me here?"

"You said you would like to see the singer again."

Cindi Mayweather raised her arm in the air and sang out, "Tell me are you bold enough to reach for love?"

Hux's baton was up and registering his bid before he could stop it.

Kylo turned to look at his companion for the first time since they landed. And someone else; the briefest little flicker of dark eyes from the stage up to the balcony and for the first time Cindi Mayweather noticed the copper haired General of the First Order. Hux stopped breathing. She didn't pause even a fraction, and bids piled atop his, quickly outstripping him, but his eyes remained locked. He became aware that someone was talking to him.

 _"Hux,"_ Ren was saying. "What are you doing?"

He had to think for a moment. There was no ready answer.

"Nothing," he said. Nothing of course because this whole spectacle was ridiculous and there was no question of his becoming caught in it as Ren no doubt intended. He was a man of integrity, of duty, of the strictest and most infrangible control, never to be corrupted by something so base and meaningless as a pretty android with a nice voice.

The smiling ghoul flashed his set of sharp teeth and raised the bid, causing the constable and his guards to mutter amongst themselves, and a man in the highest seats who must have been topping a hundred and ten years old raised it still higher. 

Hux's baton flashed again.

"General," Kylo grabbed his arm this time. "I didn't think you'd actually --"

"Some mystic you are, then," Hux said, shaking his arm free. His mind was made up. What good was the salary of a striped and decorated General if he used it on nothing, what good was the sizable inheritance, the ancestral home on Arkanis? He watched the numbers go up and up, feeling drunk on his first ever rush of impulse. 

_And when the world just treats you wrong, just come with me and I'll take you home, no need to pack a bag, who put your life in the danger zone?_

For a moment he felt a little jolt. For a moment he imagined her as a fragile creature, frightened and in need of help. For a moment his heart was a thing he was aware of. 

And then he heard shots. His eyes had been on her and not the growing tension in the audience as the numbers went higher and higher, and he hadn't noticed the weapons being drawn as the ghoulish man in the top hat shot something from the tip of his cane across the room at the enormous constable and a dark gentleman pulled a blaster from a crimson jacket to make several loud rebuttals.

Hux stood with his blaster halfway out of his holster, prepared to leap over the balcony and onto the stage the next moment, when the stage came alive with the light of a stray blast, spitting and pulsing around the singer. Hux clutched the edge of the balcony as he watched her body fall.


End file.
